Rick Atkinson's "Army at Dawn" a look at allied invasions and victories in North Africa

   Alex Mousoulopolous
  
   In a previous life I am convinced I lived for a long time in the brothels of North Africa during European colonialism times and the war in North Africa often gets overlooked with discussion on world War II. for those men with interest in this theatre of the war I highly recommend Rick Atkinson's book 'An Army At Dawn.'. Rick leaves no stone skipped in writing this book and detailing the events and people who were part of the allied offensive and first battles Americans had with Germans. This book is so detailed it makes you think Rick was actually in this campaign ad he has a great writing style that makes you feel you are part of the six month campaign to out the Nazi's out of Africa. Rick is a great war writer and his book on the Iraq war was such an enjoyable read that I looked forward to reading more. This lenghty book takes a while to get trhough but it does what a book is intended to do and that is make you learn new things. My knowledge of North Africa and the importance of holding this area was totally overlooked and it can be said when Hitler lost Africa he lost the war in the West. Atkinson is an author willing to put himself in dangerous situations and is a role model as I try to finish my fiction books on the European colonialism era and brothels of Algeria and Morocco. This book is a trilogy series of books that Atkinson has written and was written around 2002.  what I like about this book is that everything is covered and detailed and several maps show clearly the battle lines of what is always a confusing battle front that is desert warfare. the amount of sniper fighting and small scale battles with odd terrain makes many skirmishes reminiscent of US Indian wars in Arizona. Atkinson is able to get the reader to understand the disparate weather patterns in North Africa and how that too influenced morale and made World War II fighting more difficult than it needed to be. he fact that the first invasion battles were actually against Vichy french forces in November of 1942 shows that the north African battles were important in matters of manpower and recruitment as Germans were eager to add french and Arab forces to their ranks for world domination. A great book and great battle in North Africa and this war influenced Arab nationalists to start organizing themselves. Eventually the french would become the colonial Nazis and wars would be fought to throw them out as the Germans before them. with the french defeat in North Africa so would go their brothels and the brothels of their Algerian allies.